I am thankful the Church has clung to its teaching about the Blessed Sacrament. It’s a deeply unsettling reality. But, could you imagine how unsettling the above verse would have been for those who heard it at the time, spoken by Jesus? There is little wonder that just a few verses later it is written, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’”
In a day and age where there is so much ideological hostility, even within the Church, I wonder if the opposite of faith is not actually doubt but that of an ideological certainty that is void of grace. I guess this comes from my own experience of deepening in the truth about the sacramental teachings of the Church as a surrender not to the hubris of certainty but to the beauty and goodness of the deeply abiding intimacy of knowing Him in the Blessed Sacrament. There is an unshakable knowing in this that is not compatible with certainty. This faith is not intellectually or ideologically certain so much as it is unshakable as I gaze upon the body, blood soul and divinity of Christ who said, “I AM the bread of life.”
Perhaps I am struggling with the intellectual rancour of certainty, rather than the deep, abiding, unshakable peace freely given by grace. It seems to defy all understanding yet is understood. It reminds me of the Prayer of Saint Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
were there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment